


How It Went

by Anonymous



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Everything hurts but it gets better, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, issues? what issues? Percival has never heard of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:40:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24199882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "He says he can't remember the day Grindelwald got him. Says it's driving him crazy. He's being impossible. And stubborn."Seraphina Picquery, President of MACUSA, arches her eyebrows at that. Even washed out in the grayness of early February, with her hair shorn to a buzz of white and a shapeless black sweater hanging from her shoulders, the glare is striking, the click of a gun taking careful aim at your chest."And does thatactuallysurprise you?" she asks.
Relationships: Original Percival Graves/Theseus Scamander, Percival Graves & Seraphina Picquery
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24
Collections: Fanfic Anonymous





	How It Went

**Author's Note:**

> From a Tumblr prompt. You can read it as Thesival, Graphina, Theseus/Graves/Seraphina, or any combination of these three handsome classy idiots.

So this is how it went: 

It is Saturday, a brisk September night: Percival finally, gently spat out by the Woolworth, which must have grown quite tired of seeing him smoking his way through his Aurors' reports and then through no less than two meetings, many murderous scenarios involving himself and the shark-eyed members of the Board carefully concealed behind his smile. It’s eight in the evening. 

He has no plans. He has no intention to make plans. A longtime friend has just left for Moscow: they have spent several lovely nights together, in flagrant defiance of the current uneasiness between their countries, but now Ilya is far beyond his reach. Seraphina these days is so busy they have barely time to look at each other; they are a flash of glittery lavender silk or tailored black caught out of the corner of the other’s eye. Theseus – ah. Theseus is in England, so far away: and that is all there is to say about that. 

He's hungry: but he has plenty of coffee home, and a little Italian restaurant whose wizard-born owner is always ready to send up a _pollo cacciatora_ or an exquisite bowl of pasta to Director Graves. The sky is exploding in faded purple and orange behind the sharpness of the skyline – messily urban with the vapors of construction sites and the gurgle of cars and cabs. Percival feels so in love with the sight he’s left a little lightheaded, his heart briefly dislodged out of his chest. He foregoes Apparition. He decides to walk home. 

It's not late, not by the standards of New Yorkers – some of them, Percival knows, have been up for barely four hours, and are now busy drowsily picking through their shimmering outfits to select the right one for their evening. The streets are in no way desert, but chock full with every brand of humanity. That's why Percival thinks nothing of the gentleman in black – glimpsed for half a heartbeat, through the glass of a telephone booth. Later he will remember an impression of pale things, hair and mustache and skin: the sleek black leather of his gloves. Nothing more. 

He doesn't see the gentleman fall into step behind him; follow him past the corner, deep into his neighborhood, the velvet hush of his street. He doesn't hear the rustle of the gentleman's wand slipping into his hand, and the _thud_ of the door stopped before closing at his back; the leather brogues cracking up the steps in the silence of the stairwell, fragrant with the beeswax scent the housekeeper enchants the beams of the ceiling into remembering. 

What Percival sees instead is the stack of paperwork waiting for him at his desk, the empty bowl of his cat, Mathilda, waiting for his ministrations; what he hears is the memory of Theseus's laughter, that guffawing, cheery-British-gentry laughter of his, which never fails to make Percival feel warm and proud when he is the cause of it. What Percival thinks is that maybe, just maybe, he could try phone the man tonight – try make him laugh one of those ridiculous laughs for him. 

The door is open; the shadow of his umbrella stand, the kitchen glowing softly with its steel and its white glaze. Everything is quiet. Everything is in order. And yet: his cat is not coming to shed fur all over his pants – but is squatting under one of the armchairs instead, growling. Her green eyes are cold with alarm. 

Percival trusts cats, more than human beings: Mathilda, named after a queen both shrewd and prudent, above all others. Percival knows then to have made a mistake, a horrible mistake, but can't trace himself back to it, and it is already too late. 

The hex digs deep into his bones, shot at point blank: pain zapping up his spine. He staggers forward, trying to push the door closed at his back; trips on the umbrella stand, is too disoriented to soften the fall. The impact with the ground leaves him breathless and then there are hands on him, nimble hands sheathed in sleek black leather – tugging back his head, banging it back on the floor. An intruder. A man: a whiff of cologne in his nose, the bulk and motions of male bodies. He strikes back, elbow and teeth and kicks: he goes for the balls, because Percival comes from a life of towering thugs thinking they could have their way with him as soon as they pluck the wand out of his hand, and a brawl is not the time to be chivalrous. 

He makes the stranger groan; drags himself to the kitchen, nearly conjures up enough magic to attack. Nearly. Head slammed to the floor, again. 

He hears Mathilda growl, in fear and love: the sudden thought – _don't let her attack him, or she will die, and I can't take it._ He sees blood drop on the tiles of his kitchen, and realizes with some stupor it's coming from his nose. 

He's still fighting. He's losing. The man is over him now, straddling him and crushing him to the floor, and he is again an impression of pale things as he lowers himself to him, and press chilled lips to his skin - 

_No, no._ Percival opens his eyes. This is not it: not exactly, at least. 

He is not sure the umbrella stand was what he tripped onto; he can't be certain Grindelwald really dug his face there, into the thin grooves running between the tiles of his kitchen, and not into the tassels of the carpet in the hall, or the waxed wood of his bedroom floor. He can’t be certain he didn’t black out right away; or if he was still fighting when he got dragged away, his cat hissing in grief behind him. 

It's so very early: he can hear the nurses yawn on their patrol down the corridor. The hospital room is full of whispers and soft lights, the sleeping breaths of New York filtered in by the shutters. He touches his face, but any sign of that particular abuse – marks of tile gaps or the grain of wood – have long since healed, or been magicked away. The same goes for his home: the stand and the floors restored to polished perfection. That night has been washed clean, shook out of existence like dust motes; that night is fading, as if an invisible hand is reaching inside, to washing clean and shake dust off his very brain. 

_No._

Percival scrunches his eyes shut until he sees pale fireworks. The stitches along his jaw tug; blackness fills the space behind his eyelids. Against it he sees himself, clad in the rich dark of Italian-cut wool, clicking his door open and feeling the tip of a wand press at the center of his shoulder blades. He remembers the surge of panic, the impression of hovering on the brink of a gaping mouth. He makes himself walk into it. 

_Again_ _**,**_ he commands: and for the fifth time tonight, he watches as Grindelwald shoots him at his back, and climbs on him, grabbing at his hair and laughing in his ear like a lover, snarling with his teeth against his jugular, _Not so clever after all, Herr Graves._

*** 

"He says he can't remember the day Grindelwald got him. Says it's driving him crazy." Theseus’s teeth ache, from too much clenching."He says he should be able to remember. That remembering things is practically the second lesson an Auror is taught after how not to shoot off your foot with a hex, and that until he has that pinned down and he knows how things went, he won't stop thinking about it. He's being impossible. And stubborn." 

Seraphina Picquery, President of MACUSA, arches her eyebrows at that. Even washed out in the grayness of early February, with her hair shorn to a buzz of white and a shapeless black sweater hanging from her shoulders, the glare is striking, the _click_ of a gun taking careful aim at your chest. 

"And does that _actually_ surprise you?" she asks. 

"Yes. No. Still, it's bullocks." 

A non-committal hum. 

"It _is_ , Phina. Noah Grayson told us it's completely normal: that it is the brain's way to protect itself from the horrible things it's seen happen, and that it's normal he doesn't remember them clearly anymore – and one day they will come back, or they won’t, but we have no way to know that now. Raging against the workings of his own mind isn't what Percival should do now. He should be resting. He should be eating more; reading his damn science books. He should sit in his chair and graciously accepts our visits as we shuffle before him and humbly apologize again and again for having been a bunch of blind buggers, if he's in the mood for that sort of entertainment." 

"It's Percival Graves we are talking about. He wouldn't be the crocheting type even if trussed up like a boar and tied to a bed – and he's already way more mobile than that." 

"There must be a middle ground between crocheting and obsessing over your own abduction, right?" 

The doorbell rings over a new flux of customers: the cafe shuffles and murmurs around them, adjusting to its new currents. Theseus presses his forehead against his palm, skin still cool from the foggy winter air they have pushed through to get into the shop. It helps. It doesn’t help at all. 

"I have tried to reason with him, I did, but I don't understand,” he says. “I just don't. Why he can't just let go–" 

"Bullshit." Seraphina’s voice is a blade; no, a gunshot. “Stop lying to yourself like that, Scamander.” 

Theseus blinks. He knows Seraphina is not one for soothing words and chiffon-soft encouragements, and he knows the strange place they stand with each other: a drab frontier outpost, the shaky friendship of people who only vaguely talk the same language. Since the cursed morning he hurled himself to this side of the Ocean, tie dangling loose from his neck, spending most of his nights sleeping on sharp-edged hospital chairs or on her own couch, they have spent more time together alone than ever before; they employed most of it to share smokes and grunts and doze off against coffee shop tables and get stupidly, supremely drunk, exactly like casual comrades incapable of communicating in more of a shared pidgin. Theseus has been completely fine with it: still, he hadn’t expected this harshness. He had thought their outpost rules allowed for casual forms of kindness. 

He looks up from his lukewarm tea, trying to keep the shudder of hurt from his face: knowing it would only make her angrier. 

"Why?" he asks. He also knows that Seraphina has often a reason for not being kind. 

She takes a drag from her cigarette; in the blow of blue smoke, the bruises under her eyes look shockingly deep, cavernous with lack of sleep. 

"You know damn well why he is like this, Theseus," she says. "You've known him long enough to get it. Percival has made a career out of being sharper, stronger, and quicker than the rest of mankind – always several steps ahead of the world. He has persuaded everyone he is all those things; he is indeed most of them. But he's also a control-freak, over-achieving bastard, just like when he was a snotty eleven-year-old – and I can say it, because we're exactly the same. He had convinced everyone he was practically untouchable, and made invincible by his brains and his charms and his staggering collection of expensive suits; he had almost convinced himself of that, too." 

She snuffs out the cigarette – the Muggle way, drowned into her mug. 

"Then he got taken. Then he got taken, and held in a closet for months by a bleached maniac who stole his face and his home and his _life –_ and made sure he was aware of every step of the plan, every single thing he was taking from him. He got rescued, yes – but paraded in the papers like something between a martyr and a pitiful Dickensian orphan, that pic of him swaddled in your coat winking from the front page every local newspaper across the whole country. If that had happened to me, I'd be rabid: and I would not have peace until I know exactly how it happened, and what went wrong and why, and when exactly I got stupid enough not to be an invincible bastard anymore." 

"That's " Theseus has so many indignant, reasonable, softhearted things to say he feels them scramble to get out; they end up clogging up his throat like dirt down a pipe. "That's not true. It's not a matter of being stupid. He has nothing to blame himself for–" 

"But he does, Scamander. And you can do absolutely nothing about it. So don't say you don't understand it, when the truth is you don't _want_ to understand." 

She pauses. She looks away, at the edge of the table, the checkered floor. "I've spoken to him, yesterday. I was there when he woke up the first time after surgery. Oh, he's furious, make no mistake about it: he is angry at me, at you – at New York as a whole, I feel. But I do not doubt for a single moment the person he is most angry at is Percival Graves." 

Theseus opens his mouth; closes it. Sinks his hands into his hair, the vicious knots he’s left overgrow in it. 

"That's insane. That’s bloody insane." 

"Agreed." 

He tugs a little harder at his hair – a little past the line of comfort. In the flash of pain, he sees Percival's face that morning, before Seraphina dragged his sorry, unshaven person out for breakfast: his eyes downcast, hard and flat, the mesh of silver scars running down the side of his face; the trail Theseus would have peppered with kisses, once upon a time. 

He hisses out a sigh. His eyes burn, but it’s mostly out of frustration, like a scared child. "Since when is having one moment of weakness a sin, Phina?" 

"In our world?" She pats his hand: a shock of warm fingers. "It has never been anything else." 

*** 

So this is how it went: 

It is Friday night, and he is still at work: jacket hanging from the back of of his ugly neo-Gothic chair, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, a self-refilling coffee cup steaming at the center of a circle of cigarette stubs – prostrated around the saucer like pagan worshipers. The whole of Percival, long legs crossed at the ankle and head leaning against his hand and brain frying inside that head, is wedged behind stacks of paperwork, as if in a siege between himself and the rest of the world. Whether he is the besieged or the barbarian besieger, he doesn't know. 

He isn't actually forced to be here, on the first night of the weekend, with New York glittering just outside his window. He's powerful enough to have people shuffle through papers for him; he is well-respected enough to do so and not passing for a slob. But the problem is, and it is a character flaw which has made Percival's life significantly more interesting and significantly harder than it could have been, the problem is, he loves his job. He is genuinely, heart-throbbingly, toe-curlingly in love with this precinct and its perpetual tang of typewriter ink and old smoke, with the hunt, the thrill of a breakthrough after weeks of sloshing around in the funk of dead ends. He even harbors a sick, kinky fascination for _this_ side of the job: the endless stream of reports, the criss-crossing of references, the magicked-in corrections in the spelling and the figures and the tiny, innumerable details of a hundred cases. It is something the newbies should take care of, this office drudgery: something he makes sure they _do_ take care of. It is also something he often ends up rechecking once said newbies are safely home, being kissed by mothers and partners after the unspeakable tortures Stick-in-the-Ass Graves put them through that day. 

(If his Aurors think he doesn't know about the moniker, they have clearly forgotten he had been a Junior agent himself.) 

Seraphina never loses the chance to mercilessly mock him for that; which is rich, coming from someone who is certainly as obsessively exact as he is. In other times, in other years, he would have waited for her to climb don to his floor just to mock him better, in person; to share the hundredth cigarette break that day, and maybe haul him down the street the Blind Pig for a couple hours. Tonight, the idea sounds as outlandish as the concept of Tina Goldstein swearing off hotdogs. 

It is not they are not friends anymore: it is just they are so busy, and so renowned, and that at some point, Percival has started thinking of her more as _President Picquery_ than as _Phina_. There is a pinprick of pain to examine there, right under his breastbone; there is, he feels, nothing to be done about it. 

(Most days, as they wrap in one glance their beautifully-furnished offices and the sight of their signatures on classified files, as they feel the heartbeat of the Woolworth, of the whole of the Wizarding US, throbbing at their rhythm, it feels it is worth it. Most days.) 

When he hears the knock at the door, Percival is nearly done. Still wedged behind his desk, yes; still struck on the last paragraph in Lindson's report, excruciating in both spelling and choice of words, yes. But he is tired, and distracted, and eager to go home. (Theseus's letter, the coffee-ringed, hastily-sealed envelope the pressurized tubes dropped on his desk that morning and he has tucked into his shirt before realizing what he was doing: it is still here, warm from his skin.) 

So when the discreet rapping comes, and a clearing of throat with it, he simply files it away as the normal soundtrack of late-night offices. He calls out to come in; he doesn't look up from the last page of the folder, the last sentence he's circled in red crayon. 

Afterwards, he will remember it in painful detail: the grain of the paper, the word under his thumb – _survivor._ Misspelled: _survivror_. The damnable accuracy of it, as the door cracks open, and he finally looks up at a man who is no clerk and he recognizes from mugshots plastered all over the Ministry Office in London – and as pain explodes into his neck, just under his jaw. 

Suddenly Percival can't breathe. He is pulsing with agony, shuddering with it; his fingers coiled around his pen as he falls, the grip tight with a seizure. This lasts half an eternity. This lasts no more than three heartbeats. Then Percival is scrambling up, fighting back the nausea, and springing from behind his desk – not bothering with his wand but just throwing out his hands, raw frantic magic flowing out of him. 

It's too late. Grindelwald groans, but more in annoyance than in alarm: he has surprised him, and this means he still has the upper hand. He stops Percival's next strike by grabbing at his arm; he twists it behind his back – popping it out of the socket with one, clinical thrust. 

Predictably, it hurts like a bitch. In the haze of it, Percival doesn't see the elbow coming for his head, knocking into his skull hard enough to send it banging off the corner of his chair. He feels moisture on his skin, copper in his mouth: he images the side of his cheek bruised with the arches and carved grins of Gothic demons. 

He lurches back: collapses on his knees, a supplicant. He has passed out enough times, bleeding from holes or reeling from a blow or fighting to breathe through broken ribs, to know about the shimmer at the edge of his vision. He caves in, folds on himself. The letter is burning against his shirt; the report’s typewritten words blazing before his eyes. 

_Survivror. Oh Lindson, you have to take care of these things: you have to think of your words when you use them._

_It is Latin._ Supervivere _. Additional living. It’s how we do it. An extra morsel of it, and one more, and one more and–_

_Oh Lindson, it hurts._

*** 

"What then?” Percival asks. “What happened then?” 

He is tapping a pencil against the folders on his knees: _thud, thud, thud._ He has had them brought over today, the reports – months old now – of the cases he was working on before Grindelwald; the same stash he left piled on his desk when he went missing. The dismay on the face of the poor clerk he asked about it: no one knowing what day that was exactly, of course, since the morning after his abduction someone wearing Percival's clothes and Percival’s face came in at eight sharp, and the pile of papers was fastidiously taken care of, picked apart by Herr Grindelwald's capable fingers. 

Still: here they are. Lindson's one is splayed open before him, the photos pinned to the pages already fading, the misspelled _survivror_. He has been looking for more marks – of the fight: a bloodied thumbprint, a crease in the paper – to confirm this is how it happened, this is how he got fooled and taken. There is nothing. There is no proof that evening happened at all. 

"So I was at the office. The papers, the knocking: I say come in, he does. I fight. I black out. But the timing…" 

He is not talking to anyone but himself, or the council of different Percival Graves conversing inside him: the Before-Percival, and the soft-spoken man he is with his Aurors nowadays, and the silent judge, jaws perpetually feathering with the effort of keeping in all the horrible things he would like to say. 

He is most definitely not talking to Theseus: who has been sitting by the bed for two hours, and has not been spared a single glance. 

“Graves. Drop it.” 

No reply. More private consultations. 

Theseus clears his throat. He is going to answer anyway: because he has never been among those who squirm and freeze under the touch of Percival's chilling disregard, and he is not going to start now. 

(He doesn't want to be afraid of him. He doesn't want it, almost as much as he doesn't want to pity him. Both are screens, warping the person on the other side: and he wants to be entirely clear-eyed when looking at this man, this impossible man curled around his papers, swaddled in a robe which falls uneasily around knobby bones, his face a knife to cut the world to the muscle.) 

"Drop it. I am fairly sure you already read that thing at least five times – one more and you'll burn holes through it. Which I think would force the poor chap to _rewrite_ it, something that hits me as a major violation of basic human rights." 

Nothing. Percival flips the page. Scribbles something on the side, on the tidy little notebook in precarious balance on the windowsill. 

Theseus bristles, against his better judgment. 

"I mean it. I have spent here, what?, _days,_ sitting and sleeping in this horrible chair and surviving on shitty hospital toast, and you can't even spare five minutes to have a walk with me?" _T_ _o look at me_ , he adds. Privately. 

"I thought,” Percival suggests, smoothly, “you were the one who insisted on staying here, even past visiting hours?" 

"Well, I did, but–" 

"I have asked you nothing of the sort. You are free to go whenever you like." 

"Of course I am." 

The shuffle of paper ceases. Percival gives a sigh. 

"This is important, Theseus. You may not see it, but it's important." 

"Of course it is." 

He sees his voice has failed to sound completely convinced; he sees Percival has resented it. He is pouring again over his papers, muttering to himself. Abruptly, Theseus finds himself on his feet, heart pulsing in his throat, abuzz with a foreboding which sounds as crisp and clear as a voice whispering in his ear: if you let go now, he'll drift too far to ever come back to you. 

He crosses the room, to the window, to the sharp shadow Percival cuts into the light. He regrets not having put on a spraying of cologne. He rests his hand on Percival’s shoulder, thumb brushing the skin peeking out from under the lapel of the robe. 

"Is there really nothing else you would like to do? Nothing I can do for you?" 

The shoulder under his hand stays exactly the same: birdbone-light, hunched, loose with lack of attention. There has been a time, a time Theseus can't quite think in terms of past just yet, when his touch would have worked a strange kind of magic into that shoulder: jolt it back into life, a tender, warmer life than the one it usually allowed itself. 

_Just say it, Percy_ , Theseus thinks. _Just tell me what you want, and I'll get it. I can call Seraphina and have delivered here all your clothes, or new ones – the tailor wrapping you in those complicated fabrics you love, the velvet and the wool and the silk lining, the magicked weave so black it drinks a room dry of light; I can have cakes brought here, and bagels, and those soft chocolate things your Miss Goldstein gets from the bakery of that boyfriend of hers, tens boxes of them. I can force Grayson's hand into letting you out for the afternoon and sneak you into a cinema, and watch four movies in a row, eating chocolate, making love in the rows of seats farthest from the light and the silver kisses on the screen; I can break you out of here, if nothing else works – off to the West, with nothing but the clothes on our back and a car and your scorn and your wounds and the miracle of you still having a beating heart._ _I am strong. I am a powerful man. I am not beyond being stupid._

_Just say the word. Just tell me there is still something you want from me._

Percival shakes his head. "No. No, thank you. I believe there is nothing else I would like to do, right now." 

Theseus, with his golden muscles and soft eyes and six feet seven of goodness, of brightness, thinks of himself with a word he has never before being forced to use: inconsequential. 

He swallows his prayer, his plan. He swallows the tremor in his hand until he's peeling it off Percival, tucking it back into his pocket. He says he's going to get some coffee. He's dismissed with a nod, the pen rapping its tattoo again. _Thud, thud, thud._

On Percival's shoulder, the bare skin and the pajama collar and the robe, no mark left of his passage. 

*** 

This is how it went: 

Thursday night: his Thursday reduced to the bottom of a tumbler, the film of residual firewhiskey painting it in amber; around him, the speakeasy is dazzle of light and heat and sound. 

He is not drunk, not really: but he's loosened, like a lock. His skin clings to his shirt, slick with fresh sweat under the jacket; the hair trimmed but mussed, the lips parted, his eyes growing heavy. He is easier to pick open. 

He has come out of the office scarcely one hour ago: the office hasn't let go of him just yet. Tendrils of it hold fast: the sight of Mrs Dowemar's white naked feet, the only thing left intact by her murderer; the Church case Portentina is losing sleep and time and heart on, the boy's eyes staring at him from the pics in the folder – large and dark and mad with terror like a rabbit's. 

_This job feeds on pain, and death: the pain and death we try to collect, like lost wallets and fallen scarfs, and make right._

_Still, we feed on them. We get soaked up in them_ . 

Percival takes a breath. He pulls himself up, hands splayed against the table, the movement precise and economic despite the liquor sloshing in his veins. He leaves a couple of bills by his tumbler; his fingers are shaking minutely. 

This, he thinks, this is one of the few times he feels he’s in sore need of a friend. 

He has lovers, of course: some of them he would call friends as well, people who are intelligent and compassionate, whose tongue you appreciate both when in your mouth and when talking of politics and philosophy. But he misses, suddenly, piercingly, the ease of sitting back with someone who doesn't expect to be charmed or fascinated at any point during the evening; someone who would listen as you grunt about how terribly hard these nights are sometimes, and that you’ve come to the age when a man should start wanting a brownstone and a partner and a herd of kids and a dog, and that you are concerned because you don't know if you can have any of it and you are not sure you want it at all; someone you can talk to about many more complains like that – plain and normal and minuscule and eating away at the hems of your heart. 

He has a couple of people who could that. They are – not here. They are probably too many things at the same time to make sense of it. 

_It is all right,_ he tells himself: shimmying towards the stairs, against the flow of shifting, dancing, laughing bodies, the hot ocean of it. _I just need fresh air._

Air, and home: enough time to piece himself back together in all parts, screw them tight again. He just needs air, and he will not think about her working just five blocks from here – or him, in a place so far away he's already yawning to another morning. 

_Air. Out._

He climbs the steps; he slips gracefully past a redhead, her breasts naked under her golden slip and brushing against his chest; he lingers briefly at the glance a black-eyed gentleman gives him on his way down, the smoke of his cigarette trailing blue as it follows him into the glittering dark. He comes to the exit; is slapped in the teeth by the cold. The skyscrapers are still ablaze, like in a constant inferno of electric fire, the streets ebullient with cars. He has not bothered donning his jacket just yet. He lets the breeze trickle down his collar as he moves to the side, as he tucks himself into a side alley. 

Why does he do that? There are so many better shortcuts, so many cleverer ways to get out of loudness and bright lights. But he is tired, trailed by dead women and by the eyes of Tina's boy; he is a loosened lock. 

The shadow is already there when he turns the corner: or it appears then, coalesced into a man. Tall, pale under the curved shadow of the hat. The man is moving down the alley towards him, he is stopping by his side. 

"Excuse me, Mister Graves. Have you got a light?" 

The man's cologne, this close, is sharp with metal and mint, almost overwhelming: Percival blinks into it. He lowers his eyes, fishing around in his pocket for his silver lighter. 

A gloved hand seizes his wrist. Ice floods his veins. 

It is only then he realizes the stranger has called him Mister Graves. 

*** 

"Are you punishing us?" Seraphina asks very softly, very quietly, one night in his apartment, shortly after he gets discharged from the Hospital Ward. "I’m not judging. I would just like to know." 

Percival doesn't pretend to be surprised. Or offended. 

"Punish you how?" 

"With this researching, this obsessing over the reports. With the fact you can't remember exactly how it went, the night you were taken, and that it's driving you mad." 

"Oh." He blinks, a long, heavy blink. "Oh, no. I thought about that, but it's not it." 

He answers her next question when it's still in her brain, half-inchoate. He beats her to her own thoughts. She wasn't sure they could still pull that trick. 

"I thought about punishing you, you know," he says. "All of you: Theseus, you, the kids – my own fucking family, good grief. I thought about it: how to do it, and when, how to hurt you the most with the less effort on my part. But I have come to the conclusion I don't want to." He closes his eyes. "Pain is… demanding." 

Seraphina’s throat is one tight fist. 

"So you are forgiving us instead?" 

Percival doesn't answer to that; doesn't drink from his glass, either. The thunderstorm casts shifting gray halos through the windows. The room is sighing with its wood, the rustle of its curtains. 

The apartment is squeaky clean: it smells of cinnamon and wax, the good smells of affluent homes. _Made new again,_ was Johnson's triumphant review, two days before, his team of MACUSA cleaners beaming at his side, the words he wasn’t saying ringing with the same clarity: _and so it would be best for you to be as well._

Percival smiled graciously at him; promised nothing, like the good diplomat he has always had the knack to be. But they both knew the truth. You can't fix human beings with a flick of a wand. 

Perhaps, she thinks now, watching her best friend run his finger along the rim of his tumbler, the ugly scars like a pink stream disappearing into his sweater, perhaps you shouldn't be able to do it with houses either. Some things are to be regained through sweat and scrubbing and aching muscles: the grim stuck under your fingernails long after you’re finished. 

"Do not punish yourself, either," she tells him, suddenly. "It is not your fault. None of _this_ is your fault." 

"The rest of the country doesn't seem to share your opinion. I've narrowly avoided a trial, and just because you pulled several bundles of strings at the same time. The papers, too." 

"Since when do you think the hacks care to get anything right?" 

"Maybe – but they have a point." He looks at her. "I don’t. I don’t know how he did it, Phina. I can’t see how it went – or I see too many possible versions, and I don't know which I actually lived. It's fading, all the time. I can remember the exact number of steps he took to get to my damn closet, the shoes he was wearing day he took out my teeth so I couldn’t talk back to him anymore, but I can't–" 

He runs one hand across his face, his eyes, his mouth: as if taking back the words he said, the extra ones he never intended to let out. 

She has to force herself to breathe through the next moment. She feels the crack, the long, deep one she's been nursing since that night in the desert subway, open a little wider under her skin. 

"I think I know what you mean; you know I do," she says. "Still. It is not your fault, Val. It could have happened to anyone. You have every right to move on." 

He gives a groan. "Are you going to tell me there is a reason for everything and that at least I am alive, as well? Send me pious wishes for a speed recovery?” He grimaces, an extremely Graves expression. “Never knew you had such a taste for trite nothings, Picquery." 

Surprising him, surprising herself, Seraphina laughs: her crack shuddering with it. 

"Sometimes love makes you banal. It is the price we pay for it." 

She gets up from the couch, ignores the shock on his face. Leans in to give him a peck on the cheek. 

"Now go to sleep, Piss-Val." 

He snorts. When he moves against her lips, against her kiss, he is trembling a little. "You're not my Mom, Prick-ery." 

(She waits outside, swaddled in woolly layers and charms, still freezing in the middle of a nasty urban storm, until she sees the lights in his windows going out one by one.) 

*** 

So this is how it went, how it went every time, in every possible world: 

Percival Graves is a good man, but he doesn't like the idea of the world knowing about it. He relishes the mystery he has surrounded himself with – just a dab of it, like women smearing perfume on the soft spot behind their ears. He loves the flattering light you are bathed in when watched from a certain distance. You can't be captivating and flawless from up close: and when, as a boy, he realized how close to being those things he was – how captivating and flawless his brain and his high cheekbones and his affluence in words and means could make him – he couldn't resist the temptation. 

So he makes himself untouchable: he makes himself a bit smudged around the edges. He loves, and loves dearly and tenderly and fiercely, but lets the love filter out in droplets; he is occasionally torn to pieces by the world’s cruelty, as most human beings are, but presses himself back into his shape before it shows. What harm could possibly come from it, anyway? What could this distance, this tiny gap left between him and the world, do to a life like his? 

The gap is tiny, yes: it is a space made mostly of unseen tears and sleepless nights, of jokes he has no one to tell, of houses which are always cream-colored and sleek and tasteful and never bear the signs of another touch. It is a lining more than a proper gap: and when he's with a chosen selection of people, when he laughs with them and kisses them and reaches for them, he can almost forget it is there. 

But it is still enough to make sure that he is alone on a night in the early fall of 1925 (Thursday or Friday or Saturday: we do not care for that) and that he is made briefly soft by longing, and that a man takes advantage of that softness. It is still enough for that man to slip into his clothes, his skin; enough for no one to realize it when the next Monday that man walks into Percival’s office in his stead, bidding good morning to the sleepy-eyed Aurors gathered in the break room, closing the door behind him. 

Sure, the Aurors say, Mister Graves sounded remarkably cold this morning; sure, he didn't seem to notice Han's new shoes, which he always does even if they do not always see eye to eye in matters of fashion; and when Seraphina Picquery meets him later that day he doesn’t laugh at the joke she whispered in his ear, and a letter emblazoned with the Ministry's Auror Office seal stays on his desk for days, _days_ , untouched and unconsidered – but after all, who are they to presume this means anything at all? He is Percival Graves. He is to be admired, aspired to, followed, hated; he is not to be understood. 

So Percival Graves gets abducted, in his home; he is attacked in his office; he is taken outside a club, the frisson of a stranger’s skin lingering on his, like a royal bride spirited away by devils in a fairy-tale. He can't remember which of these really happened; it breaks his heart any of them could have happened. 

_Survivror. One who_ almost _survived._

Again and again, he gets lost, in the tiny gap where all your flaws should be. 

*** 

They find each other at Percival's door: the dessert trays, lined in crisp blue tissue paper, wobbling in their hands, sharing their stupor. 

Seraphina has cast a look at the lavish Danishes in the bakery window on a whim, and bypassed a semi-formal state dinner with the Board sharks and a couple of ambassadors to come here. Her eyes are still kohled into smoky dark wings; her lips still lacquered in bruise-dark red. Theseus has come to the end of his allotted leave, and has still to decide what to do after that: on the tail of an afternoon spent staring at the phone in his hotel's lobby, reaching out to call the Ministry and then not doing it, he has stormed out into Midtown, barged into the shop, and walked here clutching the tray of steaming cinnamon rolls, pressed to his heart as if to warm it from the outside. 

The ending point, in both case, is this – Percival's place, their arms laden with sweet things. 

At the sight of each other they feel a little thrill, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. They shuffle their feet, hover together in front of the door. They clear their throat. Consult briefly on what to do. 

“So, you are...” 

“Yes. I mean, sort of – maybe you...” 

They are back to their uneasy pidgin, sentences chopped up into manageable bites. But at least, Theseus thinks, Seraphina thinks, at least a pidgin means you are trying to make a connection: that you wants the other to know your mind or your heart, bits of it, and that you trust him with them. It must count for something. It does. 

"Should we…" Theseus makes a vague gesture with one hand, not taking it off the tray. "... Go back home? Try again another day?" 

"No. No, I don't think so." 

"Neither do I. Good, then. Good.” He chuckles, weakly. “Besides, I'm pretty sure he's already heard us. We shouldn’t give him new reasons to think we are idiots." 

She gives him a smile; he grins back. They knock. They feel the quickening of the silence on the other side of the door, the shudder of ward spells falling off the threshold in one electric rush – each of them capable, if triggered, of ripping the skin off a man's bones. Then they hear the lock click, the door cracked open: Percival's breath, as a long pale hand leans against the jamb. 

"Oh," he says. "Oh. It's you." His voice doesn't sound surprised. His voice is perfectly impossible to decipher. Unconsciously, unbeknownst to each other, they both decide to believe it isn't annoyed at their visit. 

Seraphina holds up her tray: unused, she must admit, to the task. Theseus does the same, the swirls of the cinnamon rolls fragrant against his broad chest, like small golden suns. "Breakfast," he squeaks out. 

Seraphina follows Percival's eyes to the window and the glow of night lights outside; snorts at his raised eyebrows. 

"For dinner," she adds. “Breakfast for dinner.” 

Percival doesn't answer. The eyebrow is still arched; his hand still resting on the jamb, not pushing the door open, not closing it. Theseus has the fanciful impression the light of the ceiling fixture is reflecting off the cinnamon rolls and painting Percival's face in warm yellow, a lovely chiaroscuro. It makes him think of kissing him; it makes it hard to think of anything else. He grabs the tray a little harder. 

Finally, Percival steps back. He lets the door swing open, the movement rippling into him, into the arm he's pointing at the hall and the rooms behind it. They file in, obedient as children on a visit. They both know their way around this home well enough to bring themselves to their assigned places without bothering Percival with it: Seraphina curled up in the leather armchair beside the radio, Theseus taking up most of the sofa, sprawling without meaning to like huge dogs do. 

At Percival's nod they rest their trays on the coffee table, on the gramophone desk. They wait. They do not feel like speaking. Percival goes to the kitchen and starts making coffee, the motions exact and stiff with healing injuries, so determined they do not even consider the idea of offering to do it themselves. 

There are papers stacked on the armrest of the third armchair in the room: pictures, too, trapped between the pages. Only corners of them visible – a floor smeared with blood; a body barely breathing, bruised behind recognition, still utterly familiar. Theseus heard Seraphina's sharp gasp of a breath when she sees it; they need no language at all then. 

Mathilda, who usually scars halfway to death any biped who is not her owner, unfolds from one of the bookcase shelves in a tongue of thick red fur, and comes rubbing herself against Theseus's legs. He grows very still. After five more seconds he bends to pet her back, tentatively, like you do with the omens of the gods, the good as well as the bad. 

When Percival reappears, coffee pots and cups skillfully nestled in the nook of his elbow, the cat instantly abandons Theseus's legs and waits patiently for her master to sit down to plop herself on his lap. 

"You know what I am working on," Percival says. One hand is carding through Mathilda’s fur, kneading it with a cat person's abandon. The other is resting on the pile of papers. 

"Yes," Seraphina says. 

"Good. I want you to know I am not going to stop just because you came by. You're welcome to stay as long as you want; you have use of my coffee and, within reason, of my cat. But I have three files I still want to get through tonight, and I am not changing my plans. Is that clear?" 

Theseus shifts on the cushions: a frisson of something like pain on his face, like love, his lips parting around a word. Seraphina sees it is not the right word, not at all; sees Percival's shoulders grow tight at the expected blow, indeed like a cat going puffy with outrage. So, she launches herself between them: grabs a chocolate Danish from her tray, stuffing it into Theseus's large cave of a mouth before he can make a disaster out of this. 

The shoving is inelegant but effective: Theseus chokes through two whole bites before his face starts turning a healthier shade of pink. 

"That's fine by us," she says, her eyes pinned on Percival's, Theseus munching silently at her side. "Completely fine. We won't bother you with the pastries either." 

She knows Percival has recognized the _Kowalski Baker_ y logo; has noticed the flash of desire in his eyes. 

"I never said I had anything against the pastries." 

Seraphina hides her smile. She smothers into into a big chunk of cinnamon roll. There is serving of coffee, then, and cups floating on magicked momentum from one to the others, and the clicking and shuffling of sugar poured and dollops of milk added and napkins curled around flaky dough, the cloth growing moist with butter and crumbs in less than thirty seconds. 

Both Phina and Theseus can't help watch as Percival lets his fingers linger on the rows of sweets, the swirling sugar, the gloss of chocolate; as he selects one Danish, taking small bites of it with the teeth the Healer has screwed back into place scarcely one month ago. They can't help brush at each other's hand, witnessing the same miracle. 

There is no strategy, in what she and Theseus orchestrate afterwards. There is no real premeditation either. They simply keep drinking their coffee, and eating the Danishes and the rolls – Phina licking her fingers clean and picking out the almond flakes she hates; Theseus grumbling about the mess but gathering them up to eat them. They start talking, too: shooting the breeze, like in the old days when Theseus would drop in New York to moon over Percival for a bit, and the three of them would camp out in cafes and gardens and parties in-between their duties. 

All the while, Percival sits in his chair, coiled up tight: scanning page after page of the thick font of police reports, the grainy shadows in the images of his own mangled body. They pay him no mind while not ignoring him, which is no easy balance to achieve. As they do, Phina's hand unfurls from her armrest; starts rubbing at the length of Percival’s forearm with sticky-tipped fingers. On his other side, Theseus's large head of curls drops on his shoulder. He doesn't stiffen. He doesn't touch them back. They require nothing else of him. 

The photos are the first to go. Tidied up in a pile, they are put to the side, on the corner of the coffee table. Then a folder slaps closed; a rustle, papers pinned back into place in their leather sheaths. Black ink and pencil and classified red are tucked away, Percival’s hands suddenly too busy taking another pastry or unhooking Mathilda's razor nails from his sweater or twitching at Theseus's laughter against his neck, his stubble tickling the skin. 

(None of it – the reports and the photos and that night – is forgotten. It could wait for a bit, though.) 

They stay up until three in the morning: around midnight alcohol rolls in, and cigarettes are passed from mouth to mouth like kisses, and at some point a bit later someone turns on the gramophone, sultry female voices enmeshed in the air. They dance: Seraphina's makeup reduced to muddy tears running down her cheeks, Theseus nearly kicking out a chair's leg in his attempt at Charleston. Theseus drawing Percival to a dance, the music something like a waltz, something which requires them to stand very close and with their hands joined and one’s head against the other's chest. 

They stay past three too, of course: falling asleep messily, draped on any available surface. Seraphina is nestled in a pile of pillows on the couch, snoring softly. Mathilda knotted at her feet. Just before dozing off into a drunken sleep, the grief of a coming headache still hours away, Theseus is roused by a voice whispering next to his his ear. 

Percival's face hovers just before him, floating in the dark. A lovely chiaroscuro. 

"Thank you," he says. "I. I–" 

Percival trails off; the words melts away into his breathing, deep, liquid, a bit faster than it was before. Theseus listens to it; follows its lead, the rush of air out of Percival, and back towards him. In the wake of that breath, he's pushing himself on his elbows, cradling Percival's nape in his cupped hand; closing the gap between them. 

"You're welcome, Percival Graves." he says. He kisses him. 


End file.
